Jandy Nelson Quotes

The eye-roll is a 10.5 on the Ritcher. The Big One. California has slipped into the ocean.

Because it did used to be cool, super-cool, in fact - she was our Magellan, our Marco Polo, one of the wayward Walker women whose restless boundless spirit propels her from place to place, love to love, moment to unpredictable moment.

There were once two sisters who were not afriad of the dark because the dark was full of the other's voice across the room, because even when the night was thick and starless they walked home together from the river seeing who could last the longest without turning on her flashlight, not afraid because sometimes in the pitch of night they'd lie on their backs in the middle of the path and look up until the stars came back and when they did, they'd reach their arms up to touch them and did.

What is bad for the heart is good for art. The terrible irony of our lives as artists.

So we grapple with the mysteries, each in our own way. And some of us get to float around on one of them and call it home.

Remake the world.

... so so lonely, like, I don't know, a day without birds or something.

Grief is a house that disappears each time someone knocks at the door or rings the bell a house that blows into the air at the slightest gust that buries itself deep in the ground while everyone is sleeping

When I draw it, I'm going to make my skin see-through and what you'll see is that all the animals in the zoo of me have broken out of their cages.

Me would like an invisibility cloak to get the hell out of this mess.

-I will bathe in vinegar, down some raw eggs, and start looking for a wasp nest ASAP to put on my head.
-I do not understand this.
-To reverse the leanings of the heart. Ancient family wisdom.
-Ah. Very good. In my family, we just suffer.

Hanging out with her is like sitting in an empty church. That's why I like her.

Noah once told me he could hear horses galloping inside her. I got it.

Sadness pulses out of us as we walk. I almost expect the trees to lower their branches when we pass, the stars to hand down some light. I breathe in the horsy scent of eucalyptus, the thick sugary pine, aware of each breath I take, how each one keeps me in the world a few seconds longer. I taste the sweetness of the summer air on my tongue and want to just gulp and gulp and gulp it into my body
this living, breathing, heart-beating body of mine.

It's like he's fallen out of time.

It's like a hand at your throat all the time, isn't it? Nothing's inevitable anymore. Not the next heartbeat, not anything.

I want to be a wobbly people pole that tries to bring joy into the world, not one that takes joy from it.

And then we are kissing, so far into the sky I don't think we're ever coming back. If anyone asks where we are, just tell them to look up.

Really?... I'll take that as a challenge.

So can I take pictures of you sometime? ... Not here. Not like this. At this abandoned building I just discovered by the beach. At sunset. I have an idea.' He peeks around the side of the camera. 'And not with your clothes on. Only fair.' His eyes are bright as the devil's. 'Say yes.

Mom has a massive sunflower for a soul so big there's hardly any room in her for organs. Jude and me have one soul between us that we have to share: a tree with its leaves on fire. And Dad has a plate of maggots for his.

Male leads in love stories need to be devoted, need to chase trains, cross continents, give up fortunes and thrones, defy convention, face prosecution, take apart rooms and break the backs of angels, sketch the beloved all over the cement walls of their studios, build sculptures as homages. They don't flirt shamelessly with the likes of me when they have Transylvanian girlfriends. What an effing jerk.

If she were drowning, I'd hold her head under

God was very drunk when he made him.

All that matters is the worlds I can make, not this toilet-licking one I have to live in.

I'm filled with something I can only describe as recognition. Not because he looks familiar on the outside this time, but because he feels familiar on the inside.

Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people," I say. "Maybe we're accumulating these new selves all the time." Hauling them in as we make choices, good and bad, as we screw up, step up, lose our minds, find our minds, fall apart, fall in love, as we grieve, grow, retreat from the world, dive into the world, as we make things, as we break things.

I gasp, because Isn't that just exactly what I've been doing too: writing poems and scattering them to the winds with the same hope as Gram that someone, someday, somewhere might understand who I am, who my sister was, and what happened to us.

If one twin is cut, the other will bleed

He's grinning now. Also I think you're really pretty and I'm incredibly shallow.

There should be a horn or gong or something to wake God. Because I'd like to have a word with him. Three words actually: WHAT THE FUCK?!

It occurs to me with rising concern that a blow-in can also blow away.

Sarah is the most enthusiastic cynical person on the planet. She'd be the perfect cheerleader if she weren't so disgusted by the notion of school spirit.

But why didn't Gram tell us our mother wore a perfume that smelled like sunshine? That she slept in the garden in the springtime? That she made pesto with walnuts? why did she keep this real-life mother from us? But as soon as I ask the question, I know the answer, because suddenly there is not blood pumping in my veins, coursing all throughout my body, but longing for a mother who loves lilacs. Longing like I've never had for the Paige walker who wanders that world. That Paige Walker never made me feel like a daughter, but a mother who boils water for pasta does. Except don't you need to be claimed to be a daughter? Don't you need to be loved?

The smell of jasmine makes people tell their secrets

Beauty is God's handwriting.

And even as I'm kissing him and kissing him and kissing him, I wish I were kissing him, wanting more, more, more, more, like I can't get enough, never will be able to get enough.

I didn't know you could get buried in your own silence.

I do have a tendency to want to go back to school at all times in my life. Maybe I'll do the Ph.D. in art history when I'm 50, or maybe divinity school. I like teaching, too.

To be clear: More than anything, I wish I hadn't gone into that closet with Brian. But their story wasn't over that night.

The Color Of Extraordinary.

Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes part of you, step for step, breath for breath.

No woman can resist a man who has tidal waves and earthquakes beneath the skin.

You are remaking the world, Noah. Drawing by drawing

Okay, she says. Tress, stars, oceans, fine.
And the sun, Jude.
Oh all right. She says, Totally surprising me.
I'll give you the sun.

Because how could he have done this?
How could he have chosen to leave me here all alone?

He must be from a very friendly part of the Milky Way,

A comfortable quiet falls over us. Really comfortable, like we've lain on filthy floors corpselike together for several lifetimes now.

Isn't there something you want to say? Something you need to say?...We wish with our hands, that's what we do as artists...Is there something you need in the world that only your two hands can create?

I can't seem to keep you out like I can everyone else. That I think you could devastate me.

I'm so happy, I feel like I'm jumping on a trampoline, just boinging around inside myself.

There's nothing giggly about Heather usually. She's the opposite; hanging out with her is like sitting in an empty church. That's why I like her. She's quiet and serious and a thousand years old and seems like she can talk to the wind.

I liked love safe between the covers of my novel.

I don't know how the heart withstands it.

I'd give ten finger, both arms. I'd give anything. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Meet me 5 p.m. Thursday. You know where. I'll be there every week at that time for the rest of my life.

If only words hadn't eluded me today, if only I yelled back at him: I do get it! I get that as long as you live no one will ever love you as much as I do - I have a heart so I can give it to you alone! That's exactly the way I feel - but unfortunately, people don't talk like that outside of Victorian novels.

It's as if someone vacuumed up the horizon while we were looking the other way.

I'm so happy I'm not a horse!

I can tell she's crumpled up in a corner of herself, just like I do in emergencies. There's a crawlspace in me that no one can get to, no matter what. I had no idea she had one too.

You can tell your story any way you damn well please

Nothing curdles love in the heart like lemon on the tongue

So at my old school," he said. "There was this kid on the baseball team. People thought, I don't know. They saw that he went to some website or something." ... "They made it impossible for him to play. Every day, the found another way to mess with him. Then one Friday after school, they locked him in the storage closet." He winced, as if remembering and I knew. I knew then. "All night long and the whole next day. A tiny, dark, disgusting airless space. His parents thought he was at the away game and someone told the coaches he was sick, so no one even looked for him. No one knew he was trapped in there." His chest was heaving and I was remembering how he told me he didn't used to have claustrophobia and now he did. "He was really good too, probably the best player on the team or could have been. And he didn't even do anything. The guy just went to these sites and someone saw. Do you get it? Do you get what it would mean for me? The assistant captain? I want to be captain next year so maybe I can graduate early. No scholarship. No nothing. These guys aren't" - he made finger quotes - "evolved. They're not from Northern California. They don't do all-day sits or draw pictures." The dagger went straight in. "It's brutal in a locker room.

Being with boys is more dangerous for me than killing a cricket or having a bird fly into the house.

I felt a springing in my chest. Could Dad and I be close? Like a real father and son?

Oscore is my favorite model," he says. "He has a very strange face. I don't know if you notice. God was very drunk when he made him. A little bit of this. A little bit of that. Brown eye. Green eye. Crooked nose, crooked mouth. Lunatic smile. Chipped tooth. Scar here, scar there. It is a puzzle.

If you're someone who knows the worst thing can happen at any time, aren't you also someone who knows the best thing can happen at any time too?

On my way out, I stop to visit with the angel and make my last wish. For Noah and Brian.
Best to bet on all the horses, dear.

You have to see miracles for there to be miracles

I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her.

What's weird is that she looks like she's in a windstorm all of a sudden. Her hair's blowing and her dress is slightly billowing. I check under the table to see if there's a vent or something, but there isn't. See? Other mothers don't have their own private weather. She's smiling at us so warmly, like we're puppies, and something catches in my chest.

You're going to obliterate me, you know.
- Oscar Ralph to Jude Sweetwine

You misunderstand", Guillermo says. "I believe in everything".

Because in addition to joining dangerous gangs and having parties, this Noah also goes out with girls, keeps his hair buzzed and tidy, hangs at The Spot, watches sports with Dad. For all other sixteen-year-old boys: fine. For Noah, it signifies one thing: death of the spirit. A book with the wrong story in it.

I have an allergy to catching and throwing and kicking and dribbling of any kind. Noah is not a team player. Well, duh. Revolutionaries aren't team players.

I tell you not to be timid. I tell you to make the choices, make the mistakes, big, terrible, reckless mistakes, really screw it all up. I tell you it is the only way.

What if I'm in charge of my own damn light switch?

I want to put my hands on your chest. I want to be in a thimble with you.

I know the expression love bloomed is metaphorical, but in my heart in this moment, there is one badass flower, captured in time-lapse photography, going from bud to wild radiant blossom in ten seconds flat.

He carries pieces of the galaxy around in a bag

Gravity Dress maybe? - and then, that's

I was going to show your brother Gemini-the Twins.

But the guilt didn't have much of a chance against the dawning realisation that I was falling in love. I had stared out the window at the early-morning fog, wondering for a moment if she had sent Joe to me so I would know that in the same world where she could die, this could happen.

We walk and walk through the gray ashy dusk and the forest starts to fall asleep: The trees lie down side by side by side, the creek halts, the plants sink back into the earth, the animals switch places with their shadows, and then, so do we.

We're sprinting at the speed of light when the ground gives way and we rise into the air as if racing up stairs.

She smiles at me and it sends a warm summer breeze around the room.

This is how it all begins. With Zephyr and Fry - reigning neighborhood sociopaths - torpedoing after me and the whole forest floor shaking under my feet as I blast through air, trees, this white-hot panic. You're going over, you

A few times I try to form a question so it sounds casual and normal, but each time the words get caught somewhere in my throat and never make it out.

And then he smiles, and in all the places around the globe where it's night, day breaks.

Don't be sad." She says it so warmly, it makes the air change color. "It came right through the wall last night.

Who wants to know that the person you love and need the most can just vanish forever

Parents aren't allowed to kiss like this!

I push him down and climb over and straddle him, holding his hands over his head so he's helpless.

I have had this longstanding interest in going back to school to get a Ph.D. in art history. I was especially interested in exploring this idea of the ecstatic impulse in an artist.

She gives off light, I give off dark.

You two will figure it out. I know you will." Maybe we will, maybe we are, but not if she tells him. "You're very much alike. You both feel things very deeply, too deeply sometimes." What? "Jude and I have quite a bit of armor on us," she continues. "It takes a lot to break through it. Not you and Dad." This is news. I never thought I was anything like Dad. But what she's really saying is that we're both wusses. That's what Brian thinks too. I'm just someone who "draws pictures." And it burns in my chest that she thinks Jude's like her and I'm not. How come everything I think about our family keeps changing? How come the teams keep switching? Is this how all families are? And most importantly, how do I know she's not lying to me about not telling Dad?

I feel way cool, like I'm wearing sunglasses even though I'm not.

If Mom died, the sun would go out. Period.

I watch the vein in his neck pulse. I watch him convert oxygen to carbon dioxide. I watch him existing and existing and existing.

I love pizza, meaning: Even when I'm in the middle of eating pizza, I wish I were eating pizza.

I gave up practically the whole world for you," I tell him, walking through the front door of my own love story. "The sun, stars, ocean, trees, everything, I gave it all up for you.